


Stagecoach Shenanigans

by Merkwerkee



Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: Alcohol, Beer, planet metaverse: invasion, s6 e 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22856821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Reese the transforming stagecoach makes a brief pit stop on his way across the country to meet up with his people





	Stagecoach Shenanigans

Reese hummed to himself as he bounced and rattled over miles of empty desert.

He’d lost his pursuers a fair ways back thanks to a handy gorge, and had decided to strike out overland afterwards because it seemed like a good idea at the time. His current disguise was a red ragtop Jeep; he’d been traveling as a Winnebago for a while, but then he’d seen the Jeep driving over a dirt track and decided that since he hadn’t seen any Winnebagos doing that, maybe the Jeep was the less-conspicuous choice. So he’d switched, and put up hologram dummies of his people in the seats so’s no-one would suspect him. 

In the driver’s seat he’d put Patric, since the man talked constantly about how he was good at driving and complained that Reese didn’t need his help. In the passenger seat he put the switch-man - whose name he hadn’t managed to catch, in addition to never having been formally introduced. The hologram didn’t look like the last body the guy’d been in, but that was okay. That face didn’t belong to him and it’d felt _wrong_ to put it up; the dummy had a very different face and body shape, but it was the _right_ face and body shape so that was all right. The youngest of the four he’d put in the back seats, letting the hologram stretch out comfortably across the whole back row like the young guy never did; Reese knew it was wrong, but it made him feel nice to think of the boy relaxing comfortably so he kept the illusion as it was. The metal man he stood in the back, bracing him against the top supports to look out over everyone; he seemed like the kind of guy who would enjoy that. It wasn’t quite right, but Reese also edited the metal bits out of the hologram’s face to keep up the look of being a perfectly harmless Jeep.

“We’re coming up on a road soon,” he said, and the holograms nodded in unison. “Doont stop on t’ road, whale get coot,” Reese said in his best approximation of Patric’s accent, the hologram at the wheel’s mouth moving in time with the words. “But our trusty stagecoach will see us through safe and sound!” He said in a higher pitch, the hologram in the back seat mouthing along with the words.

Reese sighed and settled lower on his axles. Driving alone just wasn’t the same; he missed his passengers with peculiarly fierce ache. Sure, he was pretty certain two of them didn’t like him much but they were all he had in this new, confusing world, and without their guidance he was getting a little anxious. Besides, the boy seemed to like him a decent amount and that made up for a lot; the boy was why he’d gone and made a spectacle of himself in front of everyone that was chasing them after all. The other two seemed like they could handle it, but there was something about the kid that made his….soul, for lack of a better term, ache.

So when he’d picked up the chatter about the attack planes, he’d gone all out. He’d dropped his disguise and blasted all the frequencies he could find with reports of a rabid stagecoach heading down the highway and they’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. Reese _still_ wasn’t sure how he’d survived the missile blasts, but survive he had and now he was on his way to meet his people in Reno, Nevada.

 _His people._ The thought gave him a warm glow and he put on a little bit extra speed because he could. His wheels weren’t Jeep wheels, after all, and there was nothing on them to puncture. They also seemed to be made of something impervious to being bent, cracked, or otherwise shredded by the off road conditions and while he couldn’t explain it, he was certainly grateful. A straight line in the direction he wanted to go was much, much faster than having to obey speed limits on the roads that meandered here and there and boasted such annoying features as stop lights and speed traps. The faster he went, the faster he could find his people again and they could all ride together.

Reese slowed down as he approached the highway; he had to cross it, but diving straight across tended to make people honk their horns at him and he didn’t like that noise - it reminded him too much of Patric complaining how useless and obvious Reese really was. So he slowed to match highway speed and put his hologram’s blinker on - he wasn’t sure exactly what it was for, but it made people more willing to make space for him to get on. As he did, a flash of light caught his optics a few cars ahead and his axles skipped a rotation. There, splashed across the semi-trailer doors of the truck and standing proudly head and shoulders above every other car on the road, was a bottle of beer.

_Mmm, beer._

Almost without conscious thought, Reese kicked his speed up a notch and pulled into the left-hand lane. Easing up beside the truck - there was a big logo splashed on the side of the trailer, along with more beer bottles - he increased speed slowly until he matched pace with the much larger truck. His people had given him booze money, but he couldn’t fit inside the tiny liquor stores he’d seen so far. This was much more convenient. Surely they wouldn’t mind if he just stopped a little while for refreshment?

Reese eased back just a little until his front quarter panel was about even with the spot where the trailer hitched to the truck. It was a big, solid-looking connection, sure, but if he just…Concentrating hard, he folded out one of his hidden robot legs and kicked the connector. Once. Twice. The third kick was met with an awful crunch and a hiss of escaping air, and the big rig leaped forward as the trailer came free of its moorings. The trailer itself began slowing down immediately, the sudden loss of air pressure kicking on the emergency brakes and Reese pulled his leg back into himself even as he nudged the trailer gently off the road. The rough surface slowed it even further, and it came to a juddering halt less than a quarter mile from where it had parted company with the truck.

There was no real good or subtle way to do this, so Reese simply shrugged himself into his bipedal mode and set about getting the doors open. There was a lock, sure, but it was designed to foil organic people trying to get into the trailer, not someone Reese’s size; a pinch of his fingers and the thing tinkled merrily to the ground. Pulling open the doors was the work of a moment, and the sight that met his eyes……was a lot of cardboard boxes. Disappointed, he poked one; why did the trailer have a picture of beer on it if it didn’t carry beer? The box made a crunchy tinkling noise, and fluid began leaking out the bottom. Curious, Reese swiped a digit through the stream and tasted it. Immediately, his spirits lifted.

Beer!

Rather than try and deal with the box of broken glass, he reached for another case and tore the top off; sure enough, nestled inside the case were bottles upon bottles of beer. Reese may or may not have squealed for joy, he couldn’t really say either way. The truck was full of _beer!_ It’d been so long, his tank was all dried up, and he wasted no time in pinching the top off a bottle and draining it. Then another bottle. Then another.

“Hey!”

Reese finished his bottle and looked down, the half-dozen or so bottles he’d managed to consume only beginning to touch the edge of his thirst, and saw a short, angry-looking man wearing some form of hat and a huge scowl. He blinked, grabbed another bottle and drained it, then blinked again. The man appeared to be getting angrier the longer the silence stretched; Reese wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for, so he reached into the current box he held in one hand and offered the man a bottle.

“Beer?”

“Beer? _BEER??_ You broke my truck and stole my load, and you’re offering me my _OWN BEER?_ ”

The man seemed incensed, though Reese couldn’t quite parse why; the man wasn’t one of his humans, wasn’t relying on Reese for anything, so why was he getting mad about Reese having a few beers? He thought for a second, put the bottle down and then reached inside his chassis and pulled out the bills the boy had left on his seat for him to acquire booze with and offered them to the man.

“Beer money?”

The man reached out and took the bills, rifling them quickly before sighing heavily and tucking them inside his jacket.

“Ah hell. Hitch’s wrecked anyway. Gimme a bottle, I don’t think I’m gettin’ any further today.”

Reese didn’t quite understand the man’s tone, but he definitely understood the request for beer and there was plenty to share in the truck. Reese handed him a fresh bottle and the man did something clever to get the top off while Reese simply pinched the top off his again and guzzled it down. The man took a few sips from his bottle while Reese drank six more before he broke the silence again.

“Why does a robot drink beer, anyway?”

Reese glanced down and shrugged even as he drank another bottle. “Don’t know. I came online like this; it’s not just beer, I love me some booze too, but I couldn’t tell you why.”

The man made a noncommittal noise and silence reigned again. With every dozen bottles he consumed, Reese could gradually feel his joints start relaxing. He hadn’t even realized they’d been tensing up until the beer started lubricating them, and the feeling was wonderful. By the time he’d reached his tank’s full capacity, he was feeling very nice indeed and there were still several cases left on the pallet. The driver of the truck, who by this point was even more drunk than Reese, somehow, had introduced himself as Hank and was sitting on a throne made of empty cases, head lolling and empty bottle held loosely in his left hand.

“Tha- thassh it? Yer fffull?”

Reese staggered to his feet, sloshing audibly, and nodded enthusiastically. “Yesh! Ah, fffeelsh sho good. I’m, I’m gonna - gonna jusht take shhhome for th’ road.”

With some difficulty - and more than one case dropped and smashed due to clumsiness - Reese managed to stack a decent pile of cases a bit away from Hank and the remains of the trailer. Hank himself, stared with glassy-eyed interest. “Hoor - how are y’ gonna, gonna get that inshide you?” he slurred and Reese grinned.

“ _Watch thish_.”

With that he staggered two steps towards his pile of beer cases and put his hands on it even as he triggered his transformation sequence. The cases, held by his robotic hands, were pulled to the interior of his wagon form mostly undamaged; he did lose one or two with nasty crunching sounds, but the rest of them made it fine. As he turned to continue his journey, he saw Hank try to wave after him before falling over an empty bottle and not getting back up; in that moment, Reese wished - just a little - that Hank was one of his people. It was nice to have someone to share a beer with. Maybe the boy would like a beer?

With that heartening thought, Reese sped off into the sunset.


End file.
